Super Shared

Saving files in Photoshop

Saving files in Photoshop and file formats.

The file format you use to save your work in Photoshop will depend on how the image will be used.

Preserving Layers

If you want to perserve layer information so you can re-edit the image or apply the same techiques to another image, then save the image as a .psd file a PhotoShop Document.

The Menu item is

File > Save As

Keyboard short cut

Shift + Control + S (PC)

Shift + Command + S (Mac)

In the Save As Dialogue box

Give the file a unique name (Photoshop will add the extension, in this case .psd)

You can also check

 Save:  ? As A Copy and photoshop will add the word copy to the file name in this case it would be "Beach copy.psd"

TIP: In Photoshop, if there is a button or icon that you dont know what it does, put your "pointer" over the item and dont move it... in a few seconds a yellow box will popup and tell you what it does!

If you want to perserve layers in the PSD document Make sure the Layers box is checked and always perserve your color profile..

Saving for the Internet

The .jpg file format is "lossey" the more the file is compressed, the more data is thrown away. Too much compression and the image/photo looses detail...

The menu is 

File > Save for Web...

Whats important here is to choose how much compression, and the file size you want to actually display on the web or in an e-mail

If the file is going to be displayed on a web page Check Convert to sRGB 

When you make all your choices click the Save... button at the bottom of the page...

Go to link Download

Saving jpegs the saga continues

Sam Siciliano asked the following question...

Gary, I tried using the alternate save for web rather than save as, but I ran into many memory issues.  Im not exactly sure what is going on.  Im running Windows XP, and I have about as much usable memory as possible with that OS.  I have 4G, of which about 3.2G is addressable.  Photoshop Preferences shows that it can get up to around 1.6G, and I set the level up to 1.2G, which it seems to recommend.  However, I keep getting warning messages pop up when I try to view jpegs in save for web 2-up.  Forget 4-up!  If I lower the percentage (of which Im not sure) and start shrinking what is displayed in the windows, I have better luck.

I wondered if the sheer size of my files is creating a problem.  My Sony full-frame has one of the biggest sensors available, and my raw files are around 33M.  When I save a psd file in CS5 in 16-bit mode with that Prophoto RGB color profile and with even a couple layers, I get files of about 350M!  This does seem rather huge to me.  When I was using Photoshop Elements, 8 bit, and default sRGB, my files were only around 150M.  However, I had memory issues with save for web there as well.  Anyway, Ill try to bring in a file to try on the class PCs, but let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions!

You actually are asking a real good question here…

Go to link Download